Yībiàn 醫便
Medicine at Hand (also Yībiàn tíngāng 醫便提綱) by 張受孔 (Zhāng Shòukǒng, fl. late Ming; jìnshì uncertain) — late-Ming official; also associated with Wángshìyù 王侍御 (a 侍御 Censor) and Liúcānzhī 劉參知 (a Vice-Counsellor) as patron-extenders
About the work
The Yībiàn in 5 juǎn is a late-Ming practical recipe handbook, the result of a multi-generational layering by senior Ming officials in their administrative posts. Its origin (per the autograph preface): originally compiled by Shìyù gōng 王侍御公 (“Censor Wáng”) during his Shǎnxī (Qín 秦) circuit-inspection tour; expanded by Shēn Liúgōng 參知劉公 during his Wúxīng (Wúxìng 吳興) prefectship; further augmented by the prefacer’s father (a 直指 Censor of 陳岷麓 at Qīngxī 清溪) and finally by the prefacer himself, who added the tígāng “essential summary” annotations. The author identified in the catalog meta is 張受孔, who is the final compiler. The work was first printed c. 1571 and reprinted with extensive tígāng annotations c. 1606.
The work’s organising principle is practical accessibility for the official-traveller: each recipe is summarised in its essential indications (the tígāng “summary outlines” at the front of the work), so that a busy official without time for full medical-textual study could locate a recipe by indication and use it on the spot. The recipes draw on the Júfāng and Zhū Zhènhēng (Dānxī) tradition with Ming-era expansions; the framing is that of the jūnzǐ guānrén travelling-official’s portable medical kit.
Prefaces
Two prefaces:
- 序 by Xú Yìngdēng 徐應登 (hào Niànzhī dàorén 念之道人, Xúnàn zhíLì jiānchá yùshǐ 巡按直隸監察御史 — Inspecting Censor of Zhíli circuit). Frames the work in the yī / shù (medicine / technique) opposition; quotes Confucius “能近取譬，可謂仁之方也已” “to take what is at hand and find a parable — that is the method of humanity.” The preface narrates the work’s transmission: Wáng’s Qín circuit → Liú’s Wúxìng → Xú’s father’s Qīngxī → Xú himself. Xú’s father gave him the book on his exam-travel days; he kept it with him on tour through Jiāngnán and the war-zone (jiāngbiǎo 江表 / Yangtze-frontier conflicts, the late-Ming Manchu and rebel campaigns). The preface notes that the original is now in tatters and the people named are all dead; the present xīnzhī “renewed edition” is meant to preserve the transmission.
- 醫便提綱 (the “Yībiàn Summary Outline”) — a tabular list of the 96 numbered recipes with one-line summary indications; an editorial / pedagogical apparatus that prefaces the recipe sections.
Abstract
Zhāng Shòukǒng 張受孔 (fl. late Ming; precise lifedates unrecorded; not in CBDB) is the final compiler of the work; his contribution was the tígāng summary-outline apparatus that converted the underlying recipe stock into a quick-reference clinical tool. The earlier compilers — Wáng Shìyù, Liú Cānzhī, and Xú Yìngdēng’s father (Chén Mínlù 陳岷麓, Zhízhǐ Censor of Qīngxī 清溪) — are likewise late-Ming officials with documented administrative careers but otherwise sparse biographical record.
The work’s significance:
- Multi-generational official-medical layering. The Yībiàn is a particularly clear case of collaborative inter-official medical compilation across multiple generations, with each successive compiler building on his predecessor’s manuscript.
- Practical-clinical recipe summarisation. The tígāng summary-outline apparatus is one of the earliest sustained late-Ming attempts to convert recipe collections into quick-reference clinical tools, anticipating the Qīng yīfāng jíjiě genre.
- Official’s medical practice. The work documents the Ming-era official’s medical practice during circuit-inspection and field assignment — a setting (no resident physician, war-zone, remote prefecture) that produced significant late-Ming medical-publication patronage.
Translations and research
- Hé Shíxī 何時希 (coll.). 1992. Yībiàn 醫便 (punctuated edition).
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §41.3.2.
Other points of interest
The Yībiàn is a clear example of the late-Ming decline of the imperial medical bureau and rise of official self-help in matters medical: with the Tàiyī yuàn increasingly perceived as ineffective, senior Ming officials carried personal medical handbooks on tour and used them in lieu of physicians. The work documents this institutional dynamic explicitly.
Links
- Wikidata: no dedicated entry.
- Wikipedia (zh): 醫便.
- 醫便 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB